Milan, and the Prince of Padua + were heard of scarcely fifty leagues from their own cities; but Petrarch was known every where. His youth was devoted to love; his age to ambition: and the poet of Vaucluse became an ambassador to the Princes of Italy, the Senate of Venice, the Pope, and the Emperor. Centuries have now elapsed since this elegant man illumined the southern hemisphere of Europe, and his influence is still prevailing not only in those delightful regions, but in the less celebrated countries of the North. "His passions," as a judicious critic has justly observed, were tinctured with a sense of religion, which induced him to worship all the glorious works of the Deity, with which the earth abounds; and he believed, that in the woman whom he loved, he saw the messenger of that heaven, which thus revealed to him its beauty. He enabled his contemporaries to estimate the full value of the purity of a passion, so modest and so religious as his own; while to his countrymen he gave a language worthy of rivalling those of Greece and Rome, with which, by his means, they had become familiar. Softening and ornamenting his own language by the expression of every feeling, he changed, in some degree, its essence. He inspired his age with that enthusiastic love for the beauty, and that veneration for the study of antiquity, which gave it a new character, and which determined that of succeeding times." No one was ever more charmed with Petrarch than I was in early youth. I respected his genius; but it was his mode of life at Vaucluse, his hatred of Avignon, his disdain of the world, that captivated me so much. "Why My estimable friend Lorenzo, one day inquired of me, do you exhaust yourself in gazing on the moon, and the planets; and meditating on the fame of Gassendi, Kepler, and Galileo? why do you not rather endeavour to ride in a chariot, as well as your acquaintances?"—" All rainbow!" returned I. "To be born only for this!-To rise up early in the morning; that I may eat; that I may drink; that I may sleep; that I may propagate my species, and die! It seems almost an insult to the human understanding. Much sooner would I lead the life of the hermit, and become a subject. for some future Goldsmith. "No flocks that range the valley free, To slaughter I condemn ; Taught by that Power that pities me, But from the mountain's grassy side, A scrip, with herbs and fruits supplied, "All this is very well," returned Lorenzo, "but will it last? Philosophy is an excellent dessert; but it is only a dessert. We must not only eat; but we must drink. Depend upon it, my dear friend, if this humour is indulged, you will soon resemble the character so emphatically described by my learned friend Dr. Good; or those more general ones described by Esquirol in his masterly work on the Medi * Luchino, and Galeazzo Visconti. Francesco di Carrara. cal Sciences." "And what are these?" returned I with some degree of asperity." Read, and, as the critical term is, judge for yourself." "I have at this moment under my care, says Dr. Good, a hypocondriac of about fifty years of age, who affords sufficient proof, that Moliere drew his Malade Imaginaire from nature, and hardly added an exaggerating touch. His profession is that of the law; his life has been uniformly regular, but far too sedentary and studious; without having any one clearly marked corporeal affection, he is constantly dreading every disease in the bills of mortality, and complaining, one after another, of every organ in his body; to each of which he points in succession as its seat; especially the head, the heart, and the testes. His imaginary symptoms, however, soon disappear, provided they are listened to with gravity, and pretended to be prescribed for, but not otherwise. Yet, in disappearing, they only yield to others, that can only be surmounted in like manner.' "Now that I have read your reference," said I, "I must take the liberty of assuring you, that you are yourself much more likely to become afflicted with a disorder of that kind, than I am. Because,”"Because what?" inquired Lorenzo, with no small share of alarm. "Because, of all men living, those are most subject to phantasies of this kind, who never permit their imaginations to take root, till they are beyond the period of sixty-five. Now for the other picture you alluded to." "It is here.-Mons. Esquirol seems to have known something of those most addicted to the spleen. They dislike to move out, and love to loll on a sofa. They are irritated if you advise them to take exercise. They abandon their ordinary occupations ; neglect their domestic concerns; become indifferent to their nearest connexions: in short, they will neither converse, nor study, nor read, nor write, shunning society, and being impatient of the inquiries or importunities of friends.'" "Monstrous!-No! when I become weary of my friends, they must have long ceased to be friends. I agree you, that I am sometimes, in no small degree, disgusted with the world. But I can never be so far alien to the common feelings of human nature, as not to respect a good man, and to admire a wise one." I closed this with a bow; upon which Lorenzo stretched out his hand; and we walked arm and arm into the garden. with The moon was at the full, gilding the hemisphere; and as soon as my friend beheld it through the trees, he burst into an exclamation, that reminded me of a beautiful passage in Scott's Lord of the Isles. and I desired him to repeat it. "It was a night of lovely June, High rode in cloudless blue the moon, Ah, gentle Planet! other sight Ah, now," said I, “ you have changed character all of a sudden. Not ten minutes since, you were inquiring, why I loved to look upon the planets; and now you are delighting me with a quotation, which, if you had not previously been charmed with it, you could not have repeated so immediately at my request." "It is true," said he, "I have in this acted the hypocrite. I have been long weary of the world, since I find it so full of vapour, vituperation, and vulgarity: and I have detected myself, not very unseldom, delighting my imagination with a passage from an agreeable French poet. Désert, aimable solitude, CHAULIEU. "There is no such place in the world," said I," at least none in Europe, Africa, or Asia: what America may produce, I cannot presume to say. There is solitude, but no permanent repose for any one : Men's own passions will never let them rest. Montaigne relates, that when he retired to his own house to enjoy the remainder of his life in privacy and repose, he fancied he could not do better than leave his mind at full liberty to follow its own direction. But no sooner had he done this, according to his own account, than, like a horse broke loose, which runs faster than his master desires him to go, he found his mind giving birth to so many chimeras and fantastic monsters, that at length he began to make a catalogue of them, in the hope that by such means, he might get rid of their absurdity. No! my friend, there is solitude for every one who chooses to enter the portico of her temple; but as to repose there is no permanent repose for any one, on this side the grave. A nutshell is a gilded barge; A humble cot, a palace large: Where youth seems age; and age seems youth; All is delusion! nought is truth." A few words more, in respect to my favourite Petrarch.-How much was I charmed with that elegant and accomplished poet, and his three friends, Socrates, Lelius, and the Bishop of Lombes. With what rapture did I, in imagination, climb the rocks, and behold the fountain of Vaucluse below; the Mediterranean in the distance; and among the shrubs surrounding his cottage, the faithful old fisherman and his bronzed wife. I was present, as it were, at the moment in which he first saw Laura step out of the church at the monastery of St. Claire. I went with him through Languedoc to Lombes; and, in company with his friend, the Bishop, beheld the Pyrenees rising over that little town. I travelled with him, also, through France; sympathized with him at Liege, when he could scarcely find ink enough to copy two of Cicero's Orations; and beheld the women of the Rhine washing their arms in the river, in order to drive away their sins and anxieties. I sympathized with him in all his wanderings, disappointments, pleasures, and prospects. Enchanted with his genius, and the elegance of his taste; his scorn of wealth; his neglect of promotion; his admiration of the MAGNET, VOL. IV. PART XXIII. I Rhone, the Mincio, and the Apennines; his dislike of trusting himself to the sea; and his hatred of Avignon.-I even partook of his admiration of Rienzi! Then I followed him in his introduction to the various Italian courts; felt the earthquake as he sat in his library in the city of Verona; beheld his visions, his dreams, and the death of Laura. Then commenced a new era in his existence :-his admiration of Virgil and Cicero; his reception at Naples; his friendship with the king; and his coronation in the capitol of Rome. Then followed the loss of his friends, and the plague; at which visitation I was in great agitation, 'lest he should die. When I had mixed, however, more largely in the world, and found care and ambition surround me on every side, I felt no small resentment towards Plato, Cicero, Petrarch, Fenelon, and other eminent writers; because their works had seduced me, through the medium of their sentiments, and led me through the mazes of vicissitude almost to the brink of destruction. This resentment lasted some time. Being, however, at a small inn among the wilds of Merioneth, an odd volume of Petrarch's Life lay in the window, and, opening it at a passage which described his dialogue with St. Augustine,* I came back, like the prodigal son, with shame and repentance. In the former number of SUMMER EVENINGS, I alluded to a Temple, to which the late Sir GREY COOPER used frequently to retire. Upon passing through the village, three or four years since, I was anxious to pay a visit to this Temple; but was chagrined to find that it had been removed; most of the trees cut down; the water sullied; and in part filled up; and the whole presenting a comparatively wretched appearance! I was, however, in part recompensed, by perusing an ODE, written by the same elegant hand, that traced one of the Odes to the NYMPH of the FOUNTAIN of TEARS. It is, assuredly, a fine and truly classical production. ODE. (By the late Sir Grey Cooper, Bart.) [The subject of the first part of the following lines, is taken from an unfinished Latin Poem, written by Mr. Gray: "De principiis cogitandi."] Propter Amorem Quod te imitari Aveo. SAGE Locke! thy spirit I invoke, The last best oracle, that spoke Reason and Truth to all mankind : Teach me to understand thy laws, Through Nature's complicated frame, *See Life of Petrarch, 1. S16. † See MAGNET, No. XXII. p. 21. Perception's animating flame, With power distinct, and separate train, As from far distant mountains' sides Her foaming cataracts, as they fall, Ganges, no longer Indian, rolls; § Of British laws and British souls. So the Ideas, from their source, By different ways and channels, find O'er-informed the tenement of clay." Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel. The Senses, improvable by the Judgment. § Where Tiber, now no longer Roman, rolls, Dunciad. Book 4. Lord Cornwallis was, at the time this Ode was written, Governor-General of India. |